OctaMED Sound Studio Install Issues & Advice.

[trilobyte]

@Karlos:  

Great diagrams!  What'd you use to make them?

Also, where can a guy find this "MIDI In" program?  It isn't from Jack Deckard's aminet:mus/midi/MIDITools.lha package is it?

I tried many years ago using Sample-X from Sheun Olatunbosun, and it worked *great*, but was crippled shareware and could not be registered... man there were times I was dying for the author to make that thing freeware, or let me pay for it at least!!  Eventually I went down the long, horrifying road of hardware samplers... to think I could've stopped at Sample-X (or "MIDI In"?) and saved myself so much cash, time, and headaches!

ah life
- t

[Karlos]

That's how I typed it in, and yes it manages to crash my A1200 and WinUAE just the same.

I can't reproduce this bug in E-UAE here. I am wondering if your executable is the same as mine.

Mine is exactly 256192 bytes (no embedded version string) and has the following md5 sum (would be handy if you can calculate yours for comparison) : dc33b9c7285bbc7c6dce7ed7f44678d3

[Karlos]

@Karlos:  

Great diagrams!  What'd you use to make them?

My cameraphone, Gimp and Dia

Although, in the end that isn't my A1200T, I couldn't get a decent shot of it, what with the A1 sat on top and everything

Also, where can a guy find this "MIDI In" program?  It isn't from Jack Deckard's aminet:mus/midi/MIDITools.lha package is it?

Here: http://aminet.net/package/mus/midi/midiIn32

[Karlos]

http://aminet.net/package/mus/midi/midiIn32

Having just loaded it up again, I realise it doesn't do AHI, rather an upcoming version was supposed to. Nevertheless, it will happily do 48kHz 14-bit calibrated stereo (using the same output engine that AHI's 14-bit paula mode does) on my 040. You need to be using a scan-doubled (dblpal/dblntsc) or RTG display mode for that to work though.

Just fired it up for an action shot:


click for gallery entry

[x303]

That's how I typed it in, and yes it manages to crash my A1200 and WinUAE just the same.

Checked it out under winuae. Looks like a bug in SS. You trigger the bug by selecting a channel mode 5 - 8 channels. 4 channel and 1-64 should be alright. Now select a track >= 5. Winuae crashes. :hammer:

Edit: did some research on my a1200. Same result. Crash....

x303

[Karlos]

Checked it out under winuae. Looks like a bug in SS. You trigger the bug by selecting a channel mode 5 - 8 channels. 4 channel and 1-64 should be alright. Now select a track >= 5. Winuae crashes. :hammer:

Edit: did some research on my a1200. Same result. Crash....

x303

Hmmm. I always use channel 0 for that. That's probably why I've never encountered it

[x303]

Well, in the many years i've used SS, i never encountered this bug before. :afro:

[Karlos]

Well, in the many years i've used SS, i never encountered this bug before. :afro:

Neither have I. Ever since getting OctaMED SS, I've made little to no use of the old 5-8 channel mode. All the old OctaMED modules I had written that did use them got reworked for Mix mode, which is just so much better. Every channel having it's own volume and pan was nice enough, but being able to use stereo samples (best played a centre-panned channel, of course) was just the icing on the cake for me.

Since getting the MU100R, which has AD inputs (that can be assigned to midi channels for volume/pan/effect control etc), I've found I've gone back to using 4 channel mode more frequently, since I tend to use samples less frequently and when I do, the effect processing of the tone gen is more than enough to make up for the limitation of the 4 channel mode.

[Karlos]

You know, all this might have been better off done in the music maker's social group. It's a shame that feature isn't used more. Oh well.

[Karlos]

Here's my latest work in progress. I intend to add in some of OctaMED's effects and what not in time as I re-learn those things I've forgotten.

Now how would I go about saving this into a 16-Bit wav on my Amiga?

Right, I just got around to downloading this and having a peek. You appear to be using the "8-channel" mode. What I suspect you wanted to use was the 1-64channel mixing mode, with 8 channels set in the mixing preferences.

Then you don't have to halve the volume of all your samples (which reduces their resolution by 1 bit) and you can use higher mixing rates.

A second suggestion is that rather than setting the volume of the sample in the sample editor, store every sample at the loudest amplitude possible (without clipping) and set a default volume in the instrument properties instead. The reason for doing this is that when the sample is permanently scaled in volume in the sample editor, you lose precision (whenever you make it quieter at least). The mixing routines take the raw sample value and scale it by the current instument/channel/note volume using a greater resolution than your starting 8-bit sample.

[Tension]

You know, all this might have been better off done in the music maker's social group. It's a shame that feature isn't used more. Oh well.

Very true.  It's a shame that the social group section doesn't really get used, but I suppose there just isn't enough users to make them viable unfortunately.

[Karlos]

@XDelusion

I've uploaded a 10 channel mix-mode octamed track for you to pull to bits, maybe it will help highlight a few tricks for mix mode: here...

It's basically a quick and dirty recreation of the opening theme to the game "Breathless", which I had just gotten the demo of at the time.

So, it uses 10 channels at a mixing rate of 28149 Hz (on PAL, on NTSC you might find it adjusts it slightly higher). Only 8-bit mono samples are used, so your 030 shouldn't have any problems whatsoever. If memory serves, I wrote it on a lower spec machine than that, or at least something comparable at the time.

The blocks contain 12 tracks but I never bothered using more than 10 channels, they were just handy for temporary places to copy/past sections.

[XDelusion]

I can't reproduce this bug in E-UAE here. I am wondering if your executable is the same as mine.

Mine is exactly 256192 bytes (no embedded version string) and has the following md5 sum (would be handy if you can calculate yours for comparison) : dc33b9c7285bbc7c6dce7ed7f44678d3

246,692 bytes for me. Using "Icon Info" from Work Bench. I'm not quite sure how to do the md5 sum thing.

I put everything in 64 CH Mixing Mode, set it to 8 Channels under Mixing Settings, and now the command no longer crashes my Amiga, though my samples are all screwed up, play wrong, or don't play at all, but I will re-read everything you posted before as I believe you explained why this is and how to fix it.

[XDelusion]

One final point to note. When you enable Mix mode, the note range for sample playback is increased by 2 octaves in the low register. That is to say, the pitch you'd get from C-3 in 4 channel mode is now 2 octaves lower. To get the same pitch, you need to use note C-5.

You'll encounter this problem if you load an old 4 channel mod and enable mix mode and try to play it. To correct it, you need to use the Edit -> Transpose option which opens the transpose window. You'd need to globally increase all notes by 2 octaves.

And here in lies the answer. Everything is starting to make more sense now, though I'm having issues still.

The tempo is all messed up when I put things into 64Ch Mode, which is easy to fix, though I did want to point it out.

As for this Transpose option. It looks like I have to select the Sample I want, then click source and then destination, then octave up twice in order to make it work. Sadly this seems to work for some samples, others still sound like crap.

None the less I'm on the right track and will have another stab at 16-bit samples here in a bit.

Oh, and why is it that OctaMED SS does not use standard BPM mesures, but instead has that strange tempo interface with the 3 lines? How would I ever sync this up to somthing that is running at say 200BPM, and how would I know the diff between 4 channel mode's timing and that of 64 Mix Mode?

[Karlos]

The tempo is all messed up when I put things into 64Ch Mode, which is easy to fix, though I did want to point it out.

The problem is that you are starting with something in legacy 5-8 channel mode. This was always very restrictive and required the use of SPD, rather than BPM and even the SPD settings worked differently than 4 channel mode if I recall correctly.

Basically, do not ever use the old 5-8 channel mode other than to replay old mods written for it. It has absolutely no benefits and tons of limitations. It isn't even faster than mix mode for 8-channels.

If you are going to create a mod with more than 4 channels, start it out in mix mode immediately. You'll find it far easier to get started. The only thing to remember is that your notes need to be played 2 octaves higher than in 4 channel mode (unless you used Ext samples in 4 channel mode) to achieve the same pitch.

Oh, and why is it that OctaMED SS does not use standard BPM mesures, but instead has that strange tempo interface with the 3 lines? How would I ever sync this up to somthing that is running at say 200BPM, and how would I know the diff between 4 channel mode's timing and that of 64 Mix Mode?

It can use BPM, you get to choose whether or not to use BMP or the old SPD method. The latter is a throwback. If you use 4 channel or 1-64 chan mixing mode, you can use BMP no problem. As with the old 8 channel mode, it's a throwback. Always start new projects with BPM as the tempo control.

[XDelusion]

Here is what I'm talking about.

See in Open Mod Plug Tracker (for Windows), you merely set your BPM, and that's that.

On the Amiga side you got BPM, but you also have TPL and LPB amongst other things.

I understand how to get it into BPM mode, but then I often times need to change TPL, and when I do that, it sometimes makes BPM about useless in that moving the BPM level has no effect accept within the 1-12 range, etc.

All I want to do is set the BPM to 200BPM to match the timing of the other programs I'm using.